I Watch Her Leave
by DiMick
Summary: Kate's thoughts and feelings from the end of S1, branching out into an AU. Uploaded from Tumblr by request.
1. Chapter 1

I watch her leave, my hand wanting to hover close to my mouth, my whole body unsure and uncertain of how to act. She rushes up the stairs out into the cold night air, and for a moment I consider following – rushing, running after her, calling her name, forcing her step to halt, her head to turn, willing her eyes to stay dry and her heart not to break. But my feet are leaden, and I have no desire to force their movement. Why should I chase her, when I am the injured party? Why should I beg forgiveness, when I am the one sinned against?

I sit back on the piano stool, rub my hands across my forehead, tight and kneading, and can feel a response building, some kind of verbal release, and I have to reach down inside myself to find the words. I sigh, and let myself say it. "Fuck" I breathe, and mean it. Fuck. It shocks me slightly, that I have thought it, let alone said it. It's not a word my father would approve of, not a word I'd ever let anyone hear me say, but, somehow, the only word appropriate for this particular situation. It's Betty's word, I think. That's what she'd say, and I see then how much of her I have taken to myself these past few months. The smoking, the drinking, the late night dancing.

"So, she kissed you," Leon says, far calmer than I might have expected. I cannot say what my face must look like, but my hands fall from my eyes, and he looks at me, then back at the music, and smiles. His fingers take up the tune again, picking out the melody, the cheerful tune now in a minor key, reflecting my own, earlier, rendition.

"Churchmouse," he says, and his tone is soft, conciliatory, "I ain't gonna judge you. You and her, you'd fit nice together".

"I'm not like that," I say, and this is important. Leon's mouth quirks down at the corners, and he continues to play the tune, humming now. Be careful what you wish for, indeed. When I arrived in Toronto, I wanted to be like Betty – bold and together and in control. But I'm not like Betty. I'm not like that, all twisted up and wrong inside. I carry my own sin, I know, but I try to live within the path set out for me, as we are all expected, as is good and true and right. The times I've held her hand, or hung on her arm, or danced or laughed or smiled in her presence, I did because they came naturally, as these things do between friends. I never had a sister; this is the way I would feel for one if I did. If Betty read more into it, perverted natural female affection and fashioned it into something else, well that is her own look-out.

"I'm not like that," I say, repeating myself for emphasis. "And you people can stop trying to make me be". I stand back, away from the piano, from Leon and leave the bar.

I creep along the corridor of the rooming house, more nervous now than when I arrived months ago, stepping slow and holding my breath to make no sound. Her door is shut, and when I ask the other girls, on their way out as I come in, have not seen her all night. I barely have the door to my room open when the tears overwhelm me and I collapse on the bedcover, coat still on, crying dry-eyed tears of anger and disappointment. I cry for the shock, the surprise, the betrayal. I cry out my feelings of disgust, of repulsion, of fear that others will imagine I am like that.

She was my friend, my first friend. A true and honest and trusted friend, or so I thought. Yet all the time, in the background, that devil's spectre haunted us. When she helped me with my papers, what motive lay there? I thought it was a desire to see me stay, but perhaps it was only desire to see me in that bathing suit. When she taught me to smoke, was she setting me free, or simply hooking me tighter? Everything now takes on a tawdry, tainted edge. Our laughter, our dances, our simple co-existence, our hopes and dreams, all take on a darker and less pleasant taste.

Someone sits down beside me, and as the bed sags under their weight the warmth of their body leaps across the gap to mine, and through my sobs I feel a fleeting pang of fear. I am in no state to defend myself against her, not now. Kind words, a hug, a crooked nervous smile, and I will be undone again. I am angry how she tricked me, beguiled me, how she drew me in – I must remember that. I set my teeth firm against one another and push my jaw tight closed.

"Oh Marion," my father says, his hand smoothing my shoulder, and his voice is kind, gentle, and only fuels my sobs. I tell him, then, everything: the story of my time here, of how happy I was, of how high I flew, and how hard I am now falling.

"I know," he says, "I know." I bury my head in his shoulder, and cry as he holds me, unspeaking, the feel and smell and solidness of him reminding me of home, of my family, of things this place can never offer. It feels like forever we sit there together, my father and I, yet it can only be a few minutes. My sobs slow and start to stop, my breathing still shaky and shallow, but calming. My father presses a kiss to my cheek, and smiles. "Come home," he says, "come home to your mother".

I pack efficiently, my few belongings fitting easily into my trunk. Some things I will not take back. My records – no player to play them on – will be the hardest to leave of all, but I have listened to my favourites so many times I think I could go a hundred years and not forget a note. The photos, those horrid damaging photos, those I will gladly leave behind. I hold the hair pin in my fist, for a moment, and then throw it, slamming across the room. It skitters out of the door and rests against my father's feet.

"Marion," he says, "you dropped this?" and holds it out me, sitting in his open palm. Just yesterday I threatened to jump out of a window because of this man, but that was just silliness. He is my father, who gave me life, taught me right from wrong, and I know, always, what I can expect from my family, my father. I take it from him, and push it down into my trunk, deep under layers of clothes where it cannot be seen.

They say that Mary, Queen of England, sister to Elizabeth, burnt hundreds and thousands of Protestants at the stake. The history books, even now, demonize her. They point to her traitorous marriage to Phillip of Spain, they speak of her harsh actions, of her mad, murderous tendencies. As a child, when I read those stories, in a battered book of my mother's, I always felt sorry for her. She was a product of her time, and place, and faith. Desperate for a child, hated and reviled by her public, unloved even by her own father. And after all, she wasn't ending those people's lives unthinkingly, meaninglessly, she was ensuring them eternal life. Turn this man over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his soul may be saved. 1 Corinthians, Chapter 5. I understand, incomprehensible as it may seem to many, that Mary's reign was an act of love, for if she did not love them, why would she try so hard to save them?

"You think I can't see the sin inside of you," I hear my father say, and I understand. I hear, though maybe Betty can't, the protectiveness in that statement, a father's concern for his child, the love in every word.

"I've seen your scars, Kate, I know he put them there". She sees, but does not understand. She holds herself there as some kind of restoring angel, a mediator of good and evil, but what authority does she have? What authority, when she has lied and tricked and deceived me? She let me rely on her, need her, when all the time nothing was as I thought it. I see now I set her up as a false idol – a guide to this strange new world – and in doing so, I lost sight of who and where I was, and where I was going.

"Please, Kate, don't leave". I have reviled her, denounced her; still she fights, still she tries to save me. I wonder whether this has tricked her too, crept up unannounced and uninvited. But I remember the woman in the bar that first night, who nodded and smiled, who asked me, later at the bar, whether I was with Betty. At the time, I saw nothing further to the question – now I wonder what deeper implications it held. I remember, too, the way she reacted to the factory film, to mentions of husbands, to romantic movies, to dances, and I know that this is not unexpected for her. This was conscious, this seduction, and probably not the first time, or the last, that she will act this scene.

"I love you" she says, and despite all that has just gone through my head, I feel her words hit me. I remember, again, Queen Mary and all those burnings. I might have said something, done something, then, but my heart has stopped again and my father's hand has not. Betty is stumbling, reeling, leaning against the wall, clutching her face, and she does not understand the pain. It saves her not, for she does not know it is intended to. I'm moving too, towards her, and I have to redirect my outstretched hands away from their intended course, away from their tender caress of her face, and down, more seemly, to her arms. I need to hold her still, to make her see.

"I don't want this anymore, and I never wanted you". The words are sharp, and want to stick in my throat, but I cannot let them. She is still now, and I know she will not follow. I look one last time, and make my farewell. My father puts his hand on my shoulder, reassuring, and we turn together and leave.

Most people would expect that to be the end of the story. But I know Betty, and I understand love. Love that hurts its object, that fights for its salvation, that never ever stops, despite how hard we try. Fuck, I think, and mean


	2. Chapter 2

My mother is watching for us, anxiously seated at the window as my father and I round the corner. Even from a distance, I can see how her face has changed in the time I've been away: it is drawn and sallow, pinched tight across the cheekbones, hollow and sunken around the eyes. The face of a dying woman. I think it to myself, unwillingly, and then banish it guiltily from my mind.

I climb the few steps to the front door, my father's hand at my back guiding me forward. I reach, automatically, for my key, but this is not the rooming house and the key is no longer in my pocket. The door opens anyway, and for the first time in months I see my mother, smiling weakly but warmly at me. She hold her arms out wide to me, and as I move in to her embrace, she smiles and sighs against my ear. "Marion, you're home". What does she think, I wonder, of my return? The two of us worked so hard for me to get away, my sudden and willing return must be surprising, to someone who doesn't know all the details.

Slowly, my life calms down to normality, rounds of public praying and singing interspersed with the daily routine of household chores. This life is very different from the life I have left behind but I find it settles around me like a familiar coat, easy and comfortable, requiring little thought. My father seems content to have me back, and he is far more even keeled than before, and has not raised his hand to me, my mother, or my brothers, since my return. Perhaps he thinks I will run again, disappear and sink into sin. But I have nowhere to run to, and have consciously left my sin behind. I feel the tug, the pull of temptation, stretching tight between me and that other life, as tight as a string on my brother's guitar. I imagine it there, physically, and see myself reaching up, and cutting it, clean, with my mother's kitchen scissors. The ache lessens, for a while, and never returns as strong.

In the early days, as I sing hymns on the street corner, I watch the passers-by warily, scouting for any sign of a VicMu 'rescue'. My father, I can tell, is watching too. They never appear, and although I never seriously thought they would, I cannot help the wave of bitter stinging disappointment that comes with every passing blonde head, every female stranger in trousers, every whiff of cigarette smoke.

It is months, well into late spring, before I fully accept that they have let me go, and I resolve too to think no more of anyone I have left behind. I cannot honestly say that I am unhappy, or that I regret coming home. The joys of this life are, perhaps, less intense, but the lows are easier too. As the weather improves, so does my mother's health. Some colour returns to her cheeks, and she gains some weight, if just a pound or two. My own clothes, by contrast, feel looser and sag across my shoulders, pooling against the windowsill that I lean on as I look out at the passing world.

"I don't know who you're expecting to see," my mother says. "That Betty woman, probably." The tone of her voice, and the mention of Betty's name, catch my attention and I have to force myself not to look round too quickly. When I finally, nonchalantly, do I find my mother has finished sweeping the room, and has left me alone. I search her out, sit beside the chair she now reclines in, and take in a breath.

"Why did you call her 'that Betty woman'?" I ask. Her eyes slip from her knitting to my face and I can feel tears hovering close to the surface, and know that a confession is about to come spilling out. My mother snorts, and focuses more firmly on the wool and needles in her hand.

"Marion," she says, "she's virtually all you've talked about. Every story, however brief, has some connection to her. And based on what your father has told me, I'm not sure she was a good influence." I fight down an irrational need to defend her – after all, just a few weeks ago I too was reciting the list of her evils. But what is, exactly, a good influence? Is it someone who exhorts you to follow their predefined path, to stay true to their morals and values? If so, you can hardly say Betty was that. If, however, a good influence is someone who encourages happiness, and self discovery, and is loyal and kind and generous and brave and honest and hardworking and funny and – well, I've distracted myself. If a good influence is all of that, then that's what Betty is. She wouldn't class herself as a good influence, but aren't good influences humble too?

"Tell me," my mother says, "Tell me why you came back, when we'd worked so hard to get you away, and what that Betty did to cause it".

"I couldn't stay, knowing you were so ill. What if I'd never seen you again? I would never have forgiven myself. And what did Betty do?" I paused, took in a breath, and steadied myself. "She made me think her my friend, and then, when I needed her most, she kissed me. I'd relied on her, trusted her, and all that time, she was someone, something, else. How could I stay, after that?" The words come out quickly and fluently, as perfectly as I've rehearsed them a hundred times in my head. Unlike the rehearsals though, this time is aloud and the sound of the words, out now into the world, have made my eyes well with tears, and I am crying, sobbing through the final sentence. This is not how I had planned this speech, and I fight my own body for control. My mother places her hand over mine, and when I look up, she is crying too, tears rolling silently down her face. When she speaks, does not respond as I had ever imagined or expected, and the surprise quite dries my tears.

"Mary, I know you better than anyone in the world. One day, when you were five or six, you came home from school and told me that you were engaged. Just like that 'Mummy, when we're older I'm going marry Ruthie Fox'." My mother smiles at the memory, and then her face falls. "You don't think I feared for you, even then? You don't think I watched as you grew up, and wondered when you never stepped out with anyone? Your father said you were just a good god-fearing Christian girl. But I think I know you better than you know yourself. So this…story. It doesn't surprise me; I might not understand it, or like it, or think that it should ever have happened, but it doesn't surprise me." It frightens me, this speech of hers, and the grudging, loving acceptance contained within, but also, the assumption. I told my mother only that Betty kissed me, and yet she responds by telling me that.

"I'm not like that," I insist, to my mother and myself. "I'm not like that. I have not exchanged my proper feelings for unnatural lusts." Just as a few weeks ago, I heard myself speaking with Betty's voice, now I hear my father's. All my life, I think, I have spoken through the words of others. When will I start speaking with my own words? What must I do to just be me?

My mother's coughing fit interrupts my thoughts. They are few and far between now, but the hacking intensity they still contain shows clearly that she will never be a well woman. I am proved right just a few weeks later, when the Lord takes my mother in the night. I feel responsible for her death – just that evening my father had taken the switch to my youngest brother for falling and ripping his Sunday suit. I don't know why, I never have before, but I had stepped between the sinner and his punishment, taking the lash high on my own forearm. My mother and brothers retired to their rooms, then, and shut the doors and their ears against the sound of the beating to come. In the morning, we woke to find my mother pale and cold. If I had not intervened, if I had not upset my father, if the evening had carried on its own usual way, perhaps my mother would not have died. I have broken the fifth commandment, and all transgressions are punished. The thought, I know, is irrational, but there nonetheless, and I welcome the pain of my newly darkening bruises, and repeat to myself the words of Corinthians, of St Paul, a man who knew as much as any about the redeeming quality of hurt.

My father and I stand by the open grave, watching my mother lowered into the earth. The day is bright and warm, and I am cooking inside my heavy mourning coat. I wish the day were wetter, darker, fatter, to reflect the way we all must feel. As the first handfuls of dirt are scattered across her coffin, I reach down and take my father's hand for comfort, reassurance, for us both. His grip tightens, unpleasantly painfully tight, and in the silence I can hear him repeating verses over and over, under his breath.

Things change in the weeks after my mother's funeral. The sight of her chair, empty, or her knitting, untouched, brings pain each time anew. This pain does not save, rather castigates the flesh and soul alike. I miss my mother. I know she is in a better place, seated with Our Lord, but I cannot help but selfishly think I should have liked her with us longer. I had not realised, but that weak woman had exerted a strong influence on all of us, including my father, calming and controlling, mediating between him and the outside world. The outside world, I come to realise, now includes myself. His looks at me are colder now, less forgiving, and his speeches in the street are ever more often delivered three inches from my face. Since my mother's death he has not raised the switch to me, or his hand, or even, when we are at home, his eyes. The beatings and the pain I have always understood to be a facet of his love, and know that their stopping signals the end of that as well.

"You're leaving us then, Marion" my father says. He raises his chin, and looks at me, hard, over the bridge of his nose. I know the look, and know that he will not physically stop me, this time. "Gods eyes, not mine, are on you always. And the devil is in wait for you, if you go back to that life." My younger brother clings about my skirts, holding my leg and crying. I bend down to him and smile, utter a few reassuring words, and steel my heart against the parting. My brother Seymour, old enough to believe for himself now, refuses to look at me, even as I call his name. His eyes are fixed firmly on the cross hanging on the wall, and I know he feels this a betrayal, not just of family duty and affection, but of God, and the moral laws that govern all our lives here.

I sit, squashed into the train seat, my trunk tucked up beneath my feet, coat clutched tight around me, and watch as the countryside and stations fly by. I watch as mile after mile is eaten up under the rhythmic churning of the wheels, and count the seconds since I turned away from my family. How many commandments broken this time, I think, and what will be the punishment? But with every receding station, every town that passes, my father's voice grows weaker, and the fear of righteous justice can be pushed away, down into the deepest folds of my soul where no light or thought can touch it. Outside, in the corridor, there are other voices, girls' voices, gleefully chattering and laughing. I could be like them, I think, carefree and happy, then correct myself: I will be like them. The voices get louder, draw nearer, and stop outside the door to my compartment. I still cannot make out individual words, but through the frosted glass I can easily make out two silhouettes – one high fashion, and one with short, bobbed hair. As I'm in the business of regular sinning now, I make one more transgression. Fuck, I think, and mean it.


	3. Chapter 3

I sit, pure still, and watch the door anxiously. Go away, I beg the voices outside the door, let me survive this journey alone. I pray, fervently, sincerely, perhaps properly for the first time since my mother's death, that the door will stay shut, will not slide open and let the voices in. God doesn't hear my prayer, or perhaps just ignores me in retribution, and the door opens. Gladys enters first, her head turned back over her shoulder, laughing, still talking to Betty behind her, who sees me and stops dead. As Betty's face freezes, Gladys turns to me and stops too. For a minute, the world hangs silent and unmoving between us all. Betty shifts and I know, although I cannot see, that she has stuffed her hands deep into the pockets of her green winter coat. She clears her throat, forcedly. "Perhaps," she starts, but is cut off by Gladys' shriek. She rushes forward towards me, arms outstretched, and leans down to me, and covers me in a hug.

"Kate!" she shouts into my ear. "We've been looking for you – literally looking for you!" She pulls back, and drops onto the seat opposite me beaming. She reaches out to Betty, still frozen and unsmiling in the doorway, and pulls her by the corner of her coat down onto the next seat. I smile, awkwardly, at the two of them and wait for Gladys to continue, the words sticking in my mouth.

"Of all the compartments in all the world," Gladys drawls laconically, and Betty rolls her eyes skyward, "we had to walk into yours!" She sits opposite me, bouncing up and down on her gloved hands. Before we have been in the same compartment for an hour, she has heard all the details of my life at home. All the details I want them to hear, at least. There is more that I will tell them, sometime; more that I need to explain – about love and loss and pain, temptation and strength. But Gladys is doing almost all the talking, and the conversation, unaided by my stiff and forced answers and Betty's total silence, is hers to shape.

After a while, Gladys falls asleep, her head leaning on Betty's shoulder, shoulders tucked under her arm. Silence descends, and Betty and I sit quietly, not looking at each other. Of all the compartments in the world, why did they have to walk into mine, I wonder. It sounds like a movie quote, and I wouldn't put it past Gladys. The high summer scenery rolls past the window, and it reminds me that it has been more than half a year since Pearl Harbour, since I left Toronto, and it is frightening how fast that time has gone. I sit across from my friends, and I have changed so much, that I wonder how they too have altered. I look up, through my brows, at Betty, and want to ask. I want to know how things have been at the factory, and how the other girls have been, and how James is, and many other things. I want to know everything, and I want them to know and understand too. But Betty's demeanor does not invite questions – she is scowling out of the window, across Gladys' sleeping shoulders, and her gaze never falters, never strays from the outside, never once slips or flickers or blinks in my direction. Just then, as I am staring across the gap too obviously, Gladys lets out a snorting, jerking, snore and Betty's head comes round and her eyes meet mine. For a frozen second, I fear she will look away again, expression unchanging, but a twitch tugs at the corner of her mouth, and her face falls into a lopsided smile.

"Very princess-like, eh?" she says, and the last word is hardly a word at all, just a laughed exhalation of breath. Her way of speaking is free and natural, so unlike my own stilted answers, and I am reminded how real Betty is, how honest and open. I cannot imagine, in that instant, why I was so angry at her, but then I remember how her straightforwardness masked lies and sins of omission, and the bitter sting of betrayal bites hard again at my heart. Oblivious, she smiles down at the girl tucked against her body, and the fond expression does not alter as she looks up at me, expecting an answer.

"A proper Sleeping Beauty," I respond, and cannot help but return the smile. A refreshment trolley rolls past the compartment, and the server opens the door and begins to ask, loudly, what we wanted. Betty silences him with a look and a sharp motion with her hand, gesturing to the sleeping girl beside her. The fact of her presence, there not 3 feet from me, is making the journey away from home harder than I ever imagined it to be. On the one hand, I want to reach out to her, to tell her how lonely I have been, how badly missed she is, and I want to be the one to fall asleep and have her look out for me. On the other, my heart is still hurt and my father's voice in my head tells me she is perverted, wrong, against God. I'm not like her, I don't want the things she wants – I don't – but I do want her, as my friend, as my colleague, as an anchor point in this brave new world.

The silence is different now, lighter, pushing less hard against my breast, and although Betty has returned to watching the window, her face is no longer quite so set, her jawline softer, less clenched, and for the moment I allow myself to believe that we can be friends again. That we can return to the way we were before Pearl Harbour, that once I am settled in my new job, new lodgings, with new papers and a new attitude, that we will once again dance at the Sandy Shores, and laugh and joke with Gladys, and that I can have the one real confidant of my life back. I am willing, nay – actively wanting to forget her confessions of love, the kiss, and all its attached sin and temptations. Gladys wakes, looks around the carriage, and self-consciously wipes her hand across the corners of her mouth.

The rest of the journey passes comfortably, and so too do the first few days of my second new life. Just as I had watched for Betty and Gladys when I was away, so too now do I watch for my father's black silhouette at street corners, on the streetcar, behind the bedroom door. He is never there, and I think that he never will be. I am free, finally, to choose my own path in life but the knowledge does not console. I miss, as little as others would understand, the constant reassurance his disapproval, of his values and rules. Without them, I feel as lost as a ship at sea, and bound to crash on unknown shores. I think that saving pain and guilt are easier to deal with up close. Castigate the flesh, and save the soul. At the time, it's easy to understand and accept. It's the distance that makes things hard. When I was at home, before, the pain and punishments I understood and welcomed, but as I left and no longer saw them day to day, the remembrance and thought of their reoccurrence became more frightening. The same is true of Betty. When I left, it hurt, and hurt her, but I understood the need for the pain, I understood and that made it bearable, even though I knew she did not. But now I am faced with the legacy of that un-understood pain: I see it in every flinch, guarded smile, and half-finished sentence. We are friends still, of a kind. Chaperoned by Gladys, we drink and dance and sing along to old records, but the old easy familiarity is gone, and the reason why hangs between us. I would wish for us to have had a different future, a better present, one untainted by the betrayals and angry words of the past. I wish, despite myself, that sometimes it would be just us, late at night, talking the day over. But it never is.

The reason why haunts my dreams at night, and distracts my days. The reasonings in my head are no longer as clear as they were. With each denial, each denouncement, the strength of the words fades a little, blinks in brightness, and shifts out of focus until I no longer know, exactly, what it is I intended to say. I think of my mother, and the pain that her understanding brought. I think of the things she told me, all my life, and sometimes I think that I can feel her, there in the room. If I don't turn my eyes, look only out of their corners, I can even see her, smiling at me, and nodding. Once, I felt her hand on my shoulder. It squeezed, comforting, and I turned around but no-one was there. Just the peeling wallpaper, and the door out into the corridor. My mother, I think, maybe one reason my father's voice and words and reasons are blurring. For a while, I worry that I may be losing my mind, losing the clarity of my thoughts, descending into hell and madness jointly. But I think, instead, that I am at last finding who Kate Andrews really is, and who she wants to be.

As Christmas draws nearer the pace of production increases at VicMu to a frantic, frenetic level, and I think with regret, late at night, of all the German mothers who must be anxiously awaiting their sons' return. I wonder whether the people who worked for Queen Mary, those who informed, who built the bonfires, who wove the ties for the martyrs, whether they too had sleepless nights and ran for the safety of home and other jobs. I wonder, too, about the queen herself. So sure in her faith and convictions, so certain that her path was righteous – did she ever waver? Did she see the faces of the burning, and ache to undo her actions? Did she cry at night, their tormented screams ringing in her head? And if not, how? I pray every day for the strength of Bloody Mary, the will to stand by my actions, to hold firm against a tide of want and recrimination.

The fact is, when the phone call comes through to the boarding house, the girl who took the call hovering as I shakingly pick up the receiver and press it to my ear, and the voice on the other end is worried and urgent, I know that this call will herald pain that will not save, will not teach or be easily accepted.

"Miss Andrews," the voice at the other end says, softly. "This is Shelia Corbett, at the Toronto General Hospital. I think, perhaps, you should come down. My mother says, it's you she'd want…" The phone drops as fast as my stomach, and I am out of the door and on the streetcar not much slower. Dear God, I think. Please, God, please.


	4. Chapter 4

I do not notice the swaying and jumping of the streetcar, but stare blankly out of the window at the passing streets. The exterior calm belies the frantic panic inside my head, heart and stomach. Please God, I think. Let her be alright.

I cannot help but imagine hundreds of different scenarios, each more bloody and horrifying than the last. I think of the man in the dark of the warehouse, and shudder with revulsion at the image. I picture Betty, torn and ruined like Vera - see her hanging screaming from the hook, the blood running down her face, blond hair peeling away forever. I think of Archie, at the test fires, see Betty mown down by shrapnel, her face pale and drawn as the sepsis sets in. I think of all the dangerous things in the factory, and the damage they could do to soft curves and pleasant features. I think, more clearly, of my own first day and the dropped Amatol. I see an explosion, burns, charred and twisted limbs, a face half melted away. That is the worst image of all, and I pray desperately. Please God, I think. If ever You loved me, if ever I did anything good in Your name, if ever You perform one miracle, act now. Let her be alright. I must look sick, for the woman next to me looks concerned. Slowly, as if through dense fog, I hear her words drifting towards me. "You alright?" she asks. Her face is kind, worried. I grab her arm, pull her coat sleeve, desperately, and she looks alarmed, less worried for me than her, and pulls away.

"Please," I beg, "have you heard anything about an explosion at the munitions factory?" The woman shakes her head, grimaces in my direction, and gets off at the next stop. No explosion, I think, thank God. The images of charred faces, the smell of singed hair, all recede slightly, leaving me to my more mundane images of horror. At the General, the smell of hospital gets up my nose, and makes my stomach clench and roil. Under the antiseptic smell, the smell of carbolic soap and scrubbed floors, under the smell of relatives' nervous smoking, I imagine I can smell blood and infection and death. I am directed to the ward, and there, at the nurses' station, I find Lorna's daughter. I recognise her, although we have never met, the resemblance to her mother too strong to ignore.

As I approach, she looks up at me and seems to know me too, although what her judgement is based on I do not dare to guess. "Kate Andrews?" she says, and puts down the chart she is holding. "Now, I don't want you to worry," that phrase fills me deep with dread, yet she continues "she fell, carrying casings, and has broken her tibia – that's a bone, in her leg – and sustained a deep cut too. She's lost a lot of blood." She takes me to the room, and shows me, at the far end, Betty lying still in a plain hospital bed. A large frame sits under the covers across her legs, her face wan and pale in the flickering electric light. She lies still, so very still, that were it not for the gentle rise and fall of her chest, I might think her dead.

"Will she wake up?" I hover by the door, far from her, not wanting an answer. Lorna's daughter looks at me, grave for a moment, and then smiles. "Yes," she says. "She's sedated. It helps with the pain, and the healing. You can stay with her till then, the doctor won't mind." Dear God, thank you.

I sit beside her bed, then, awkward in the chair, conscious of the people all around us. Betty's face is pale and tight, the skin stretched out across her features, a lock of hair lying limp across her brow. I brush it back, fit it behind her ear, and feel the beaded sweat that lay there too. Her hand lies loosely at her side, and I cannot help but take it in both of my own, tracing the worn lines of her palm under my thumbs. Her breathing is soft and gentle, and the rhythm of it gentles my own thoughts and heart. How long I sit like that, I cannot accurately say. I feel I know the contours of her hand better than my own, better than any lines or verse. The smell of her, the physical presence of her, has wound itself slowly around me, trapping me close by her side. When exactly this happened – I cannot delude myself it has been recent.

"She should be waking up soon," I hear a nurse say, and in front of her a woman is ushered into the room. Broad shoulders, straight back, long limbed rolling gait - I know at once that this is Betty's mother. "Thank you, Sister," she says, and her voice surprises me. It is soft, reverential, as if in church, and the lilting accent gives away a childhood lived in the lowlands of Scotland. I had never imagined Betty's mother before, never pictured in my head the origin of my friend, yet if I had, this would not have been the figure I conjured. How is she here so fast? I have been here a day, 6 hours, a night at most. I have had six cups of tea, and two sandwiches. I have been along the corridor to the toilets, and downstairs to the chapel, to give thanks. The doctor has been in, and the nurses several times. I have not slept. How long does it take from Saskatchewan to Toronto? By train, or by road?

"Mrs McRae," I begin, and stand, uncertain now of my role in the room. After all, I am just a colleague, a friend, no relation or blood tie holds us together. Betty's mother's attention focuses now on me, for the first time, and I feel the strength of her gaze sweep me from head to toe, feel it linger on my dress, my mussed hair, my tear-tracked cheeks, on our still intertwined hands that I have forgotten to untangle. Her look makes me want to drop Betty's hand as fast as I earlier dropped the telephone, to smooth my hair, to straighten my dress and polish my shoes, but I do not. I fight down the urge to run, hide, to fidget and feel ashamed. What, after all, is there to be ashamed of? I am here comforting a friend in her hours of need, as she would do for me.

Her mother does not speak, but crosses to her daughter's bed, deposits her handbag, and, just as I had, brushes hair from Betty's face and kisses her forehead gently. The look on her face is tender, and relieved, filled love. But when she turns her face upwards to me, the expression hardens and sets, and I wonder what I have done to deserve such a look.

"You're the woman, I suppose," she says, and the vitriol behind the words astonishes me. I know what her words, and tone, mean. I've heard them from the mouths of others, from my own mouth. You're disgusting, they tell me, you're worse than disgusting.

"Yes," I answer. "I am."

"You can go now, Miss -" she pauses, waiting for the name.

"Andrews," I supply. "Kate Andrews."

"Well, Miss Andrews. Elizabeth has her family here now and no longer needs to be fawned over by some invert." Elizabeth. That's what Betty is short for. How little, in fact, I know this woman who means so much. I suppose she must have a proper name, but it had never occurred to me to ask. I do let go of Betty's hand now, lay it gently on the bed beside her. With one last squeeze for reassurance, I stand up and away from the bed. This is it, I think. This is where loyalty counts, this is my hallway moment.

"Mrs McRae," I start, "I am not a pervert. And nor is your daughter. In fact I happen to think that she is the most wonderful, loyal, funny, kind, charming - grumpily charming - woman in the world. And I happen to love her, and she loves me." I pause, to collect my thoughts. Do not dwell, I think, on what you have just said. Do not dwell, for this is important to say. "This cannot be harder for you to accept than it was for me, Mrs McRae, it cannot. But if you can't, or won't, if you let religion, or the opinions of others, stand in your way, as I myself did, your loss will be the greater."

She looks surprised at my outburst, and I know that I do too. It has been a long time since I said that many words together, and fired them off into the world with such certainty and passion, if, indeed, I ever have. For I find that at this moment, I believe in nothing more fervently than I believe in Betty McRae. My father would say, I know, I have set her as a false idol and strayed far from the straight and narrow path of righteousness. Betty's mother looks at me, mouth agape, her hands hanging immobile about the edge of her daughter's bedsheets. Then she begins to move again, straightening the covers around Betty's shoulders, gaze fixed firmly away from me - an inherited move, I see now. She stops, and stands up, places her hands on her hip, and finally turns to face me.

"Miss Andrews," she says, and her voice is lower and softer than before, the accent more pronounced. I steel myself for what is to come, for hurt and pain and judgement. "I am going to find a cup of tea. Would you like one?" I nod, silent and surprised. As Betty's mother leaves the room, I feel her daughter stir in the bed beside me. I turn around, and see Betty staring back at me. She bites her lip, nervous, perhaps, or embarrassed at being caught so down.

"You didn't have to come," she says, and no longer looks at me direct. "You must have been here ages." Her voice is weak, her breath still shaky. She is still severely injured, I remind myself, the victim of a horrific ordeal. She fidgets awkwardly under the covers and I cross to her, offer her a drink. She takes it, before turning her head and frowning. "What you said to my mother, did you mean it?" I did not think she had heard, had imagined her still well under as I spoke, and I am unprepared for her question. I sit again, heavily, on the chair, and pick at the bed covering. I must take too long answering, for she touches my arm and repeats my name. "Kate," she says, "did you mean it?" For a second, I think I will deny it, will explain how I was only protecting her. Her face is so serious, so grave and earnest. Oh Peter, wouldst thou deny me now? My father always said, the truth will set you free. I take her hand again, hold it tight between my own. Perhaps her voice was weak, not from injury, but from nerves, as mine is now.

"Of course I meant it," I say, and lean my head to kiss her palm. When I look up, she is biting her lip again, unsure. I stand up, lean over, and press my lips to hers. As I pull back, another shaky breath escapes her, and a matching one leaves my own lips too. In that passage of breath, something deeper, more solid, passes between us. Her hand comes up, and traces my cheek gently, the line of my smile, my lips, across my eyebrows, and through my hair. The route is familiar, and I know it is the pattern my own hands traced in the hours I spent at her bedside. I love you, I think, and let the knowledge fill me. I love you, I love you, I love you, and you love me. How many time did I deny it, deny her? Oh cowardly Peter, let your repentance begin, let no more pain be caused over you. "I love you," I say, and mean it.

From along the corridor, I hear the approaching clack of her mother's heels. I stand back, drop her hand again on the bedsheet, smooth the front of my dress. But Betty reaches for my hand, grasps it in her own, and shuffles slightly into a more upright position, and turns to greet her mother. "Mother," she says, and her smile could melt the coldest heart, "this is my Kate. And Kate, this is my mother." Her mother smiles thinly at me, swallows, and tries the smile again. This time, I see where her daughter gets her charm from. She hands me a cup of tea, and sits down in the chair beside the bed, and together the three of us begin to make plans for the future.


End file.
